Guantánamo fuels hatred of West: OSCE report

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The US must close the notorious Guantanamo prison, where its treatment of prisoners fans hatred of the West and recruits more people to join Al-Qaeda, Europe’s main human rights representative concluded in a new report made public on Friday, July 1.

“The longer the detention is in the camps the more the hatred against the US and the West becomes anchored in hearts and minds,” said Belgian Senate President Anne-Marie Lizin.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which commissioned the report from its human rights representative, will vote next week whether to accept its findings, Reuters reported.

Islam Online, 2 July 2005

Dutch draft law to monitor imams’ sermons

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Dutch parliament is currently debating a draft law presented by the government on combating Islamic radicalism, including a TV show to monitor sermons delivered by imams.

The controversial measure drew rebuke from a prominent Dutch Muslim scholar who told IslamOnline.net it would deepen Muslim isolation in the country.

According to the 32-item measure, one mosque sermon would be televised each week without the prior knowledge of the imam. It would then be debated by the programme’s guests.

Minister of Immigrants and Integration Rita Verdonk told parliament the aim of this program is to draw the attention of young Dutch of foreign origin to the grave consequences of religious extremism.

Islam Online, 3 July 2005

Fascists join attack on Ian Blair

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joining the Daily Mail in an attack on Sir Ian Blair, the BNP rallies to the defence of police officers who made abusive remarks about Muslims, including a reference to Shi’ites as “Shitties”:

“Sir Ian described the remarks at the heart of this week’s employment tribunal defeat as Islamophobic: ‘That language was gratuitous, offensive and deliberate. Officers can expect to be disciplined for using language like that. I want this force to have no place for racism’. If I was one of those officers I would now look at suing Sir Ian for libel and abuse of authority within the Police. Not only is the language not racist as defined in common law, but it is also a fact that Islam is a religion not a race.”

BNP news article, 2 July 2005

I’m not sorry, says police chief

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has admitted that his methods may be unpopular within his force. He added that his mission to modernise the force would not be jeopardised by the fallout from this week’s employment tribunal, in which he was accused of having hung three of his officers out to dry.

His force was found to have racially discriminated against three white officers who were disciplined after allegedly making racist remarks about Muslims at a training day. Sir Ian was unrepentant and described the remarks, which were at the heart of this week’s tribunal, as Islamophobic, promising that there would be no room in his force for racism.

The Times, 2 July 2005

The Daily Mail, meanwhile, returns to the attack, devoting an entire article to one of the officers, DC Hassell, who is portrayed as the innocent victim of “bosses obsessed with political correctness”:

“The case, which revolved around a bungled presentation on Islam in which DC Hassell – woefully unqualified for the task – mispronounced Shi’ites as ‘Shitties’ and described Muslim headgear as ‘tea-cosies’, was eventually exposed as one of the most ludicrous and unfair procedures ever brought against serving officers.”

The Mail reports that Hassell also “told his colleagues that he would not want to be ‘that lot’, referring to Muslims fasting and abstaining from sex in daylight hours during the holy month of Ramadan. He still fails to see why any of that should cause offence”.

Daily Mail, 2 July 2005

The Mayor of London has issued the following statement: “Sir Ian Blair deserves full backing for his firm action in initiating disciplinary proceedings. We cannot go back to the bad old days when many of London’s diverse communities had no confidence in the police because they believed that allegations of racism in the Met were ignored.”

GLA press release, 30 June 2005

‘Saudis howl for blood of Koran desecrators’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“With the debate surrounding the alleged desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo, it is easy to forget that those being held at the detention center are terrorists. If one were to believe the rhetoric coming from Saudi Arabia, its citizens held there are completely innocent and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But as we learned on September 11, 2001, this is not the case.”

Another objective summary of the Arab media from Steven Stalinsky of MEMRI. Note that Stalinsky automatically assumes the guilt of the Guantánamo detainees even though not a single one of them has received a fair trial.

Front Page Magazine, 1 July 2005

Italy demands US explanation over kidnapped cleric

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Italy’s relations with the US took a further blow yesterday when Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative government said it was summoning the American ambassador in Rome to explain the disappearance of a radical Muslim cleric, who was snatched from a Milan street two years ago. Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was sent via two American military bases to his native Egypt for imprisonment and interrogation. Mr Nasr was subsequently released temporarily. In telephone calls intercepted by the Italian police, the cleric said he had almost died under torture.

Guardian, 1 July 2005

Muslim woman sues real estate company, alleges discrimination

Posted on by Bob Pitt

scarfsuit9.jpgAn Orlando Muslim woman is suing a Florida real estate company for religious discrimination after being told she could not wear a head scarf and long sleeves at work.

Danine Hammond, 27, said the office manager of Chapel Trace Apartments in east Orange County told her she couldn’t wear her hijab, a head scarf donned by some Muslim women.

Hammond is suing the Miami-based Housing Trust Management Co., which owns the complex, under Florida’s Civil Rights Act and requesting that the company compensate her for lost pay and benefits, punitive and compensatory damages, and legal fees, according to the lawsuit.

“I feel I have the right to work here in the U.S., and I shouldn’t have to compromise my religion,” Hammond said during a news conference Wednesday at the entrance to the complex, where she lives.

Orlando Sentinel, 23 June 2005

Robert Spencer offers this as an example of the “clash of civilizations”.

Dhimmi Watch, 1 July 2005

Over at Militant Islam Monitor, they’re convinced that it’s another CAIR-inspired plot to destroy western society.

Militant Islam Monitor, 24 June 2005

IHRC demand end to SOAS student witch hunt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“SOAS masters student Nasser Amin wrote an article in his university paper defending the right of Palestinians to resist occupation by violence. After the publication of the article Amin became the focus of a bitter witch hunt which resulted in him being reprimanded by SAOS University. The reprimand was published on the university’s official website without even informing Amin. His article ‘when only violence will do’ was written in response to one published by Hamza Yusuf which said, in effect that Muslims in Palestine should ‘turn the other cheek’ when facing Israeli violent antagonism.

“The article was not extreme nor even unusual, and similar arguments have been used and promoted in academia e.g. by Professor Michael Neuman. The article was set in a context of open debate about the moral rights and wrongs of Palestinian resistance, and SOAS’s response is at best bizarre.”

IHRC action alert, 30 June 2005

Most people back religious hatred law – and they’re right

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Most people back religious hatred law – and they’re right

By Ken Livingstone

Tribune, 1 July 2005

Anyone would think from the media coverage of the government’s proposed legislation to ban incitement to religious hatred that the combination of some comedians and celebrities, along with the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, represented the views of the great majority of the population.

In London, they definitely do not. The Government’s new Bill, which will significantly build on existing legislative measures aimed at combating hate crime, has overwhelming backing from Londoners. Seventy-two per cent of London residents support the new anti-incitement law, according to our opinion polls. Just 15 per cent are against. The media has ignored this impressive show of popular support for the Bill, preferring to give publicity to the unrepresentative views of a few high-profile celebrities, who have falsely portrayed it as a new blasphemy law.

Some faith groups such as Jews and Sikhs are currently protected from incitement to hatred on the basis that these religions are held to be mono-ethnic, and therefore come under the 1986 Public Order Act which bans incitement to racial hatred. Members of faiths which are defined as multi-ethnic, such as Hindus and Muslims, are not so protected. This is clearly unacceptable, and has left a loophole for the far Right.

Opponents of the Bill claim that existing laws are sufficient to deal with the racists. They cite the case of Mark Norwood, a BNP member in Shropshire who was successfully prosecuted in 2002 after he placed a poster in his window carrying the slogan “Islam Out of Britain”. They omit to mention the case of another BNP member, Dick Warrington, who was prosecuted for displaying a poster with the same slogan but was acquitted by magistrates in Leeds in 2002.

The BNP had this to say about Warrington’s prosecution: “The snag for the police, however, is that Islam is not covered by the anti-free speech race law… it’s legal to say anything you want about Islam, even far more extreme things…”

Nick Griffin’s secretly-filmed tirade against Muslims, clearly desgined to whip up the most unpleasant hatred against Asians, indicates what we are up against.

The comedian Rowan Atkinson has accused the government of “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”, which could be taken to imply that the rise in anti-Muslim hatred is a matter of little significance.

The same argument was employed during the Commons debate on the Bill by Tory MP Boris Johnson, who stated that “the problem of Islamophobia is in danger of being exaggerated”. As the editor of a magazine – The Spectator – that has brazenly contributed some of the worst examples of Islamophobia in the media, this is hardly surprising.

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Muslims in France: a ticking time bomb?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

tickingJamie Glazov poses the question: “France’s Muslim population is exploding and fundamentalist Islam is gaining control over it. French society remains almost completely oblivious. Does this phenomenon entail a ticking time bomb? What consequences does it pose to the West?”

Unfortunately some of the answers in the ensuing discussion don’t meet with Glazov’s approval. One participant in the symposium, organised by Front Page Magazine, even goes so far as to express concern that Muslims in France would suffer from a racist backlash in the event of a French equivalent to the Van Gogh murder. Glazov explodes:

“… this interpretation implies a theme that gets my blood boiling. It reminds me of the lefties here in America who, after the 9/11 attacks, instead of being sympathetic to the victims and their families and angry at the perpetrators, and supporting revenge against those who committed the crimes and those who harboured them, instead were agonizing about how Arab and Muslim rights were now going to be violated….

“Sorry, but when I think of the problem of the growing presence of Muslims in France, the first thing that comes to my mind is the heart-breaking reality of forced marriages and honor killings being perpetrated on Arab-Muslim girls on French territory. I think of forced veiling. I think of the gang-rapes of Muslim and non-Muslim girls who are not veiled in Arab-Muslim ghettoes. I think of female genital mutilations. I think of the growing radical element that might perpetrate another 9/11 over there. I think about all we can possibly and hopefully do to crush these forces. Needless to say, that is what is on my mind, not sitting around worrying what will happen to someone else afterwards, someone that is not even a victim of the huge crime that is perpetrated….”

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